Mulroney says he’s tops, Trudeau’s not
Brian Mulroney says he was the greatest prime minister — after John A. MacDonald.
However, the former prime minister says Pierre Trudeau’s contribution “was not to build Canada but to destroy it.”
Of Lucien Bouchard, he says, “I have never known a more vulgar expression of betrayal and deceit.”
The comments come in a soon-to-be-published book by Peter C. Newman. The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Confessions of a Prime Minister draws on 98 interviews with Mulroney. Excerpts are printed Monday in the Globe and Mail.
FROM THE CBC ARCHIVES: From Cheers to Jeers: The Mulroney Years
“By the time history is done looking at this, and you look at my achievements as opposed to others, certainly no one will be in Sir John A.’s league — but my nose will be a little ahead of most in terms of achievements,” Newman quotes Mulroney as saying.
According to the Globe, Mulroney gave Newman access to documents, and to family and colleagues as long as Newman agreed not to publish the material while Mulroney was still in office.
Mulroney served as prime minister from Sept. 1984 to June 1993. After he left office, his Progressive Conservative party was trounced by Jean Chr√àtien’s Liberals.
Lucien Bouchard was a friend and political ally to Mulroney. But Bouchard quit Mulroney’s federal cabinet in 1990 in a dispute over the doomed Meech Lake constitutional accord. Bouchard went on to lead the Bloc Qu√àb√àcois.
Categories